Warner Music Pulls Videos Off YouTube

iammani writes with this excerpt from Reuters: "Warner Music Group ordered YouTube on Saturday to remove all music videos by its artists from the popular online video-sharing site after contract negotiations broke down. ... The talks fell apart early on Saturday because Warner wants a bigger share of the huge revenue potential of YouTube's massive visitor traffic. There were no reports on what Warner was seeking. 'We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide,' Warner said in a statement." Warner's deal with YouTube to make those videos available came just prior to YouTube's acquisition by Google.

Comments

What? Did you get that gem?

[Opportunist]

"We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists"

So Warner thinks all the contracts they have with the signed artists are unfair and should be void?

fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters,

[similar_name]

We all know how much they care about fairly compensating the people who actually made the music.

Does Youtube get a cut of the sales?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've bought literally dozens of albums after my friends and/or girlfriend have shared youtube video links. Does Youtube get a cut of those sales?

TimeWarner is shooting themselves in the foot here. Youtube gives them free exposure. The labels don't mind paying MTV to play their videos, but they want Youtube to pay them?

Once again, the record industry just doesn't get it.

Re:Does Youtube get a cut of the sales?

[Waffle Iron]

The labels don't mind paying MTV to play their videos

It looks like the labels are doubly incompetent: MTV takes their money, but then it doesn't bother to play any music videos at all.

Re:Does Youtube get a cut of the sales?

[Insightfill]

It looks like the labels are doubly incompetent: MTV takes their money, but then it doesn't bother to play any music videos at all.

Parent got modded funny, but many of us remember the 80s when MTV started, and they truly ran the same model as the radio - 10-12 random songs per hour, interspersed with "VJ" dialog and commercials.

Slowly, slowly, they began to add "shows", usually 30 minutes in length. Some were heavily music-oriented such as the 'unplugged' series, while others were lighter such as "Remote Control". However, they all gave the ADVERTISERS what they were seeking: an easily labeled audience.

You see: since MTV was the first and largest of its kind, its audience was also pretty vague. "College student" was about all you could say and be close. But advertisers like narrower demographics: rich/poor, black/white, male/female. In its early days, when ad dollars were cheaper, they were willing to take a chance. As MTV got bigger and more expensive, they couldn't take such chances.

MTV splintered. "Yo, MTV Raps!" and other shows were aimed at smaller and clearer groups. Advertisers were largely happy, and viewers who didn't know better were also happy. We lost that random hour of music, though. I miss that opportunity that came when I could flip on a channel and discover a new rap song I would never have seen, or country, or any one of dozens of genres that I would have never 'picked' but was suddenly exposed to.

So: I put it to the /. masses. What is the current, best channel of media for opening one's horizons? Is it Pandora? Is it still Youtube? Or is there some other place that one can be 'fed' a steady flow of music from a wide net of types? Is there a venue where the music is more international? Where can I find Bollywood followed by rap?

Fair for artists?

[Chris_Jefferson]

'We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters.... Having seen the most recent agreements, appropriate compensation for artists from these kind of things seems to be zero, so I think they are already getting a fair deal.

Remember the good ol' days?

[Mononoke]

I remember when music videos were essential promotional tools. That's one of the reasons artists spend their own money making them.

Now get off my lawn.

In the Geocities Days

[Enderandrew]

In the early dark days of the internet, big companies sued small fan sites because they infringed on logos and copyrights. How dare you run a Star Wars fan site, or an X-Files fan site with racy pictures of Scully?

Then SLOWLY over the years, companies seemed to realize that fans on the internet increased buzz, visibility and mindshare for their products. Now they cater directly to the fan base by pandering at Comic-Con and such.

Warner wants a bigger piece of revenue for the videos being shown, but they're not thinking long term. It isn't just direct revenue of showing the videos, but the hype that comes along with it. If someone forwards a video to another person (or rather a link to the video) they are advertising that artist to their friends.

Monty Python has it right. They are posting clips on YouTube for people to watch for free (fans would post them anyways, only to have them taken offline) but Monty Python now has direct control over the portal, and can include links to purchase Monty Python material on Amazon.

Warner needs to wake up and pay attention.

Re:Thank goodness...

[Enderandrew]

Instead of a take-down notice, is there any chance that Google will Rick-roll all the Warner links? Please make this happen.

Warner music pulls videos on youtube...

[kramerd]

...and nothing of value was lost.

Greed & Stupidity & Lies

[Nom du Keyboard]

It's all greed and stupidity and lies.

Greed that Warners thinks they deserve more and more and more.

Stupidity that Warners thinks that YouTube and everyone else will have to cave into them and their terms (like any alleged filesharer sued by the RIAA) in the mistaken belief that: 1) Everyone needs their product; and 2) That they still have a monopoly on that product.

Lies that any of this additional money would actually go to the artists. (Think of the children<<<<<<<< artists!)

Another failure to capitalize

[Anonymous Coward]

And now Warner will receive exactly $0, while the users will simply p2p the videos that they -really- want to watch.

Warner took the potential offerings and threw them away, and now they will complain that their IP is being pirated.

So before the RIAA even asks: there should be no gov't bailout for mismanaged companies that piss on legitimate opportunities to -earn- revenue.

Hell, they don't even have to do anything other than put a stamp of approval on the deal. The music and videos are already made, the site and bandwidth is hosted by a third party. All they have to do is sit back and count money. This move is just plain irresponsible. They think they are holding out for more value -- from where? Who is going to pay more?

business model

[wideBlueSkies]

>> 'We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide,' Warner said in a statement."

Hey warner, so your videos get pulled. Good for you, and all the best.

To borrow from the Soup Nazi, if I may: "NO EXPOSURE FOR YOU".

I was just watching a couple of concert videos the other day from an old prog band called Wishbone Ash (they sound like old 70's Rush). I'd never heard of these guys before, but I really liked the sound, and I went right over to Amazon and I bought 2 CD's.

If I hadn't seen the vids on You Tube, I don't think I'd have ever known about this band. So they now have a new fan, and on Christmas eve, I'm going to introduce them to some other guys who like the same type of music.

It's like the modern equivalent of trading records... But hey, if Warner wants to pull the vids, then let them. There's lots of other music out there...

YouTube thoughtfully provide...

[ciderVisor]

YouTube thoughtfully provide a facility to replace the audio track on your uploaded video with another public domain/Creative Commons track. I was asked to either remove my home-made video to Rainbow's 'Eyes Of The World' completely, or to replace the copyrighted audio with something else from their library. I chose Tiny Tim singing 'Tiptoe Through The Tulips'. Somewhat surreal. I don't think it will reflect well on Rainbow's hired bull terriers, and ultimately it will not reflect well on Rainbow, either.

Re: fairly compensate recording artists, songwrite

[dontmakemethink]

We all know how much they care about fairly compensating the people who actually made the music.

What's worse is that videos were never intended to generate revenue on their own, they are advertising for the artist. No record label ever had a problem with MTV making money from commercials in between videos. No doubt there are absolutely no provisions in the artists' contracts for revenues generated by videos either, and no doubt we'll start to see YouTube clips of signed artists protesting this, which the RIAA can't yank.

Massive fail.

Re: fairly compensate recording artists, songwrite

[Original Replica]

It's been said here before, but Courtney Love explains "artist compensation" best:

This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide. What happens to that million dollars? They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager. That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person. That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released. The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it's based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.) So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties. The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable. The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records. All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band. Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company. If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record. Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ... zero! How much does the record company make? They grossed $11 million.

http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/index.html

I record all my music off Youtube

[Joce640k]

I just hold a microphone up to the speakers and record the song using Windows Sound Recorder.

It's very easy to do and the sound quality is perfectly acceptable because I only listen on the bus.

the real money

[Anonymous Coward]

The experience of the music fan at a live performance is not "easily copied", and live performances are where they make the real money. Digital copies should be treated for what they are, enjoyable advertising, and priced accordingly, from free to maybe a dime a song, tops. Charging a dollar for three megs of digital bits is serious price gouging, the fans know it, anyone who can use a computer knows it, that's why the public is not adopting their prices at the levels they expect. The music majors want to insure the same unit pricing they had back when it really cost a lot of money to deliver a copy, that doesn't exist now with downloads, it cost maybe a penny or something to actually do that. They can make and deliver the same "unit" now for a teeny fraction of what is used to cost 10-20 years ago, but they want the same gross purchase price? Hell no! They need to backoff the drugs a little once in awhile and sober up and enter the 21st century.

  As to movies, again, it's not the same going to a theater with a 20 foot screen and a hundred grand sound system as it is sitting around your TV, even if it is a good one. If they offered a cheap DVD on exit from the theater, say for around 3 bucks or so, they'd get immediate feedback on the movie, plus instant impulse buy revenue. 15-20 bucks for a plastic disk though..price gouging, they can stamp them things out and put them in a paper sleeve for like a buck easy at big scales, which means they could sell them for three and make profit.

    Basically, since the late 90s or so I just stopped buying full price entertainment media, it's a price ripoff. I'll buy it used for cheap, that's it, picked up a few used DVDs the other day for a few bucks apiece..because that is all they are worth. They annoyed someone who was a faithful purchaser since the late 1950s with their blatant ripoff price gouging. In the same period that computers went from 3,000 bucks to 300 bucks, and got loads better in quality and performance, the music and movie guys have the SAME PRICES for stuff that is not much better at all, it's the same notes, the same scenes. Screw that, screw them. Price gouging loons.

    CDs with music I'll pay a buck, tops. I'm not going to keep purchasing the same damn song or album just because a new format comes out, already did that, not going to keep doing that though. I went vinyl to 8 track to cassette then CD, then..no way, I don't care about blue hi-def lazer ray disks, they can stuff it, I don't need to see the nose hairs and zits in detail of some scrawny metrosexual "artist". I think they should get paid for their work and creations, I certainly do not "pirate", but trying to make a killing off of people when we all know what digital copies REALLY cost is just stupid, they are out to lunch on their business model and prices.

    Technology moves forward, some things got a lot cheaper to make, so they should drop prices accordingly and make profit on larger volume sales, and with music, the traditional way, touring or local live "work".

Re:Rock stars obviously aren't accountants.

[WiiVault]

The point being made tho is not whether or not 45k is a decent wage, but instead how the producers of the art get 45k while the suits get 11 million.

Aren't videos just promotional tools?

[crustymonkey]

Please, correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't music videos basically just promotional tools used to sell albums? Maybe things have changed since the early MTV days, which also probably the last time I watched a music video, but I've always been under the impression that the reason these were made in the first place was simply a way to sell an album (or song, nowadays). I mean, really, do people actually *buy* music videos (and I'm not talking about extended length live performance videos, just the old school MTV stuff).

Maybe things have changed in this arena in recent years, but I can't really see this as anything except another stark example of a music industry dinosaur that just wants to stay locked in it's old anti-digital model. That and, of course, the fact that they want to squeeze anyone they can to try and extort as much money as they can before they finally die off because they refuse to accept change.